The gruesome rape and killing in Delhi in December last year had rightly set the nation on fire. The nation tried in vain to atone for the crime by show of unprecedented frenzy. But in its boiling anger the national mind did lose its balance and capacity for self-analysis. It flagellated itself; shamed its soul. The stentorian chorus led the mission to shame India, imaging the Indian people as misogynists on the whole. With the frenzy subsiding, is it not time to stop self-flagellating and start thinking? The world is asking whether India is a nation of rapists and killers of women. Only facts, not words, can answer this question.

With enthusiastic support from the Indian media, intellectuals and writers, the Western media almost made out India as a semi-barbaric society.An example. Libby Purves wrote in The Times UK that the Delhi bus rape should “shatter our Bollywood fantasies” of heady spirituality, adding that upright Europeans have ignored the Indian culture of “murderous, hyena-like male contempt”. What a certificate for a rising India that the National Intelligence Council of the US in its report released four days before the Delhi rape had predicted India to become one of the three world powers by 2030! An India crying in guilt had almost endorsed Purves.

Fortunately for India, a Western woman writer, Emer O’Toole (The Guardian, January 1, 2013) intervened and tore apart Purves and her likes. Emer wrote that Purves and others pontificate, with a sense of cultural superiority, as if rape is something that only happens “over there”—read India— and something the ‘civilised’ West “have somehow put behind”. Emer pointed out that while the BBC reports, as if shocking, the statistics that a woman is raped in Delhi every 14 hours, which equates to 625 a year, in England and Wales which has a population 3.5 times that of Delhi, the proportion is four time larger: 9,509 against Delhi’s 625.Pointing out that The Wall Street Journal decries India for convicting just over a quarter of the alleged rapists, Emer says that, in the US, only 24 per cent of the alleged rapes even result in arrest,never mind conviction. How strange then is the report on India, she wonders.

Ten days later, even Emer’s data was found to be a gross underestimation of rapes in the UK. In an article in The Independent (January 10, 2013) titled “100,000 assaults, 1,000 rapists sentenced. Shockingly low conviction rates revealed”, Nigel Morris wrote: “Fewer than one rape victim in 30 expect to see her or his attacker brought to justice, shocking new statistics reveal.” ‘His’ attackers? Yes. In the West, women also rape men; a tenth of the rapists are women—something still rare in India. Nigel writes: Only 1,070 rapists are convicted every year out of 95,000 offenders according to the Office of National Statistics UK. As 90 per cent of the attackers were, like in India, known to victims, only 15 per cent victims complained—saying it was “too embarrassing”, “too trivial” or “a private/family matter”. While in the UK, a country which has less than 1/20th of India’s population, the total rapes top 95,000, the rapes in India in 2008, according to the report of the Central Statistics Office, Government of India, were far fewer—20,771.

The US is similar to the UK. The reported rapes in the US in 2006 were 212,000. If unreported rapes are added, only 5 per cent of rapists ever spend a day in jail in the US(National Center for Policy Analysis US Report No. 229). One of six US women has experienced attempted or completed rape(Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault: Statistics).More than a quarter of college-age women reported having experienced a rape or rape attempt since age 14(Kolivas, Elizabeth; Gross, Alan, 2007). This is not to say that, on the scales of the ‘civilised’ UK, India can tolerate 1.6 million rapes, or on US scale (including unreported rapes) it can accept 3.4 million rapes. This is to point out that even if the UK is ‘less civilised’ like India, its total rapes should not exceed 1,000. And even if the US is as ‘backward’ as India, rapes should not exceed 5,200 there. But in the UK, it is 100 times India’s; and, in the US, it is 65 times India’s.

In Norway, the first ranking country in global Human Development Index (HDI), one in 10 women is raped(The New York Times, April 17, 2012). According to the BBC, rape per 100,000 population is the second highest in Sweden which is ranked 10th on the HDI scale and yet as the world’s best place for women! United Nations data shows that in Sweden the rape rate is 63.5 per 100,000. In the US, it is 27.5; but as more than four-fifths of forcible rapes in the US are not reported at all (National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center Report July 2007), the effective rapes in the US will be more than 137.5 per 100,000! And what is the figure for India? Just 1.8! (See http://www.unodc.org documents on sexual violence). But, that rapes are far less in India is no matter of pride. It is a national shame even if a single woman is raped. For Indians have traditionally worshipped not only women gods, but women and girls in physical form as well, as gods. The contrast with the West is not to claim any cultural superiority, but only to point out how the Indian and Western writers who have written off India as misogynic have been blind to facts.And turn to the infamous case of four serial gang-rapes in two months in Sydney in 2000. It shook the world, but never made the Australians rapists in the eyes of the world.

More. Even gang-rape does not make news in the ‘developed’ West at times.

Emer compares the gang-rape in Delhi with the gang-rape in Steubenville in Ohio in the US, where, in August 2012, a 16-year-old girl was dragged, drunk and unresponsive, from party to party where she was raped allegedly by members of a high school basketball team.Contrasting the brutal Delhi rape and death which spurred Indian civil society to its feet, causing protest and unrest, bringing women and men into streets, with the army and the states of Punjab and Haryana cancelling new year celebrations, Emer says that in Steubenville, sports-crazy townsfolk blamed the victim. But for a blogger Alexandria Goddard, now being sued, exposing it, followed by The New York Times four months after the crime, the US might not have noticed the incident at all.

Still more. The demeaning picture of India is an extension of the long-held view that Indian traditions had made women inferior, and even led to decimating its girl children. Is this true? Look at the facts.

The gender ratio in mid-colonial India (1901) was 972 per 1,000; colonialism brought it down to 946 in 1951; modern India did it to a low of 927 in 2001. In 2011, it has improved to 940.

And in the most traditional, therefore “backward”, Bihar, the gender ratio in 1901 was 1,061, that is 61 women more than men; as late as in 1961 it was 1,005.

And now? 921! Urban India is lower at 924 to rural India’s 947; the ratios of the most modern Mumbai (822) and Delhi (823) are even less.The answer is obvious.

The more modern India is, the fewer girls it chooses to have. Who then is to blame for declining sex ratio? Modernity or tradition?

Will those who demean India introspect? Will they study the facts before commenting? Are they listening?

Western Blot

The rape record of ‘civilised and developed’ countries

US

44% of victims are under age 18.

80% are under age 30.

Every 2 minutes, someone in the US is sexually assaulted.

There is an average of 207,754 victims (age 12 or older) of sexual assault each year.

54% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police.

97% of rapists will never spend a day in jail.

Approximately 2/3 of assaults are committed by someone known to the victim.

38% of rapists are a friend or acquaintance.

UK

Less than one rape victim in 30 can expect to see her or his attacker brought to justice.

About 1,000 rapists are convicted every year.

90 per cent of rape victims said they knew the identity of their attacker.

15 per cent went to the police.

Between 60,000 and 95,000 people are estimated to be raped each year.

About one woman in 200 has been a victim in the last one year.

1 in 38 major sex crime leads to a conviction for the offence.

2 years is the average time taken for a court verdict when the accused contests the allegations.

On January 24, 2011, a Toronto policeman, Constable Michael Sanguinetti, was speaking on crime prevention at a York University safety forum in Toronto, Canada. He said: “I’ve been told I’m not supposed to say this: however, women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised.”

That misogynous comment sparked a protest that grew into a global movement. On April 3, 2011, over 3,000 women protesters walked to Toronto Police Headquarters. Although women were asked to dress in everyday, ordinary wear, many came dressed as ‘sluts’. The organisers, Sonya Barnett and Heather Jarvis, said: “We are tired of being oppressed by slut-shaming; of being judged by our sexuality and feeling unsafe as a result. Being in charge of our sexual lives should not mean that we are opening ourselves to an expectation of violence, regardless if we participate in sex for pleasure or work. No one should equate enjoying sex with attracting sexual assault.”

In India, the first ‘Slutwalk Arthaat Besharmi Morcha’ was in Bhopal on July 17, 2011; 50 attended. The next ones were: Delhi on July 31, 2011, and Lucknow on August 21, 2011.

The Common Misunderstandings

“If women really want to, they can always say no”

Many women do indeed say no, but rapists do not listen. Some resist physically and do manage to prevent further assault, others suffer greater injury.

“Real’ rapes are committed by strangers in isolated places”

Most rapes are committed by known men, and in a familiar or private space such as the woman or man’s home, a hotel room, at work.

“Rapists are sick or perverts or sexually frustrated”

There are very few rapists who, when convicted, are diagnosed as having a mental health problem. It is not sexual frustration that underlies their assault, but wanting power and control.

“Only certain types of women get raped”

It used to be thought that only certain ‘types’ of women got raped: women who were sexually active, ‘provocative’, or ‘victims’. In fact, women of all ages and ‘types’ are raped, including children and grandmothers.

“Most complaints of sexual assault are false reports”

There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that there are more false complaints of rape than other crimes. And logic suggests that the proportion is probably less than say for theft, often used to support a fraudulent insurance claim.

“Women ask for it by the way they dress or their behaviour”

This argument suggests that women are responsible for sexually arousing men through their dress or ‘flirting’. Implicit within this view is the idea that men cannot control their sexual desires, and also that women should know this and adapt their behaviour accordingly.

Jakob De Roover is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation (FWO) at the Research Centre Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap, Ghent University, Belgium

Recently, the European Parliament hosted a meeting on “caste discrimination in South Asia”. At the meeting, participants stated that “India is being ruled by castes not by laws” and that they demanded justice, because there “is one incredible India and one untouchable India.” The EU was urged to come out with a policy statement on the subject. One MEP, referring to the caste system, said that “this barbarism has to end.” This is not the first time. However, before the EU decides to publish policy statements on caste discrimination in India, we would do well to reflect on some simple facts.

First, the dominant conception of the caste system has emerged from the accounts by Christian missionaries, travelers and colonial administrators. Rather than being neutral, these accounts were shaped by a Christian framework. That is, the religion of European visitors to India had informed them beforehand that they would find false religion and devil worship there, and that false religion always manifested itself in social evils. Especially the Protestants rebuked the “evil priests” of Hinduism for imposing the laws of caste in the name of religion. They told the Indians that conversion to Protestantism was a conversion to equality. Thus, Indian souls were to be saved from damnation and caste discrimination.

Second, this Christian account of “the Hindu religion” and its “caste system” informed colonial policies in British India. Building on the theological framework, scholars now wrote “scientific” treatises on Hindu superstition and caste discrimination.

The Christian mission found its secular counterpart in the idea of the civilising mission, which told the West that it had to rescue the natives from the clutches of superstition and caste. One no longer promoted religious conversion, but the colonial educational system harped on “the horrors of Hindu society.”

Third, the colonial educational project had a deep impact on the Indian intelligentsia. Hindu reform and anti-caste movements came into being, which reproduced the Protestant accounts of Hinduism and caste as true descriptions of India.

Their advocates did not adopt these descriptions as passive recipients, but actively deployed them to pursue socioeconomic and political interests. Political parties and caste associations were created to safeguard the interests of the “lower castes.” The elites of these groups united in associations and received financial and moral support from the missionaries and other progressive colonials.

Fourth, the “Dalit” movement of today is the product of these colonial movements. The notion of “Dalits” makes sense only within the colonial account of India, which had postulated the existence of one single group of “outcastes” or “untouchables” that was supposedly exploited by the upper castes. In reality, it concerns a variety of caste groups, with no criteria to unite them besides the claim that they are all “downtrodden.” Indeed, many of these groups are poor and discriminated against by other caste groups. However, their socio-economic interests have been hijacked by some of their western-educated elite members. In the name of the downtrodden, these elites establish NGOs and then travel from conference to conference and country to country in order to reveal the plight of the “Dalits” to eager western audiences and secure funding from donor agencies.

Fifth, when present-day Europeans rebuke Indian society for the “barbarism” of caste discrimination, they are reproducing the old stanzas of the civilising mission. Such a stance of superiority perhaps worked in the context of colonialism. But today, at a time when Indians buy some of the European industrial giants and Europe is in need of more collaboration with India, it is ill-advised to continue this type of civilisational propaganda.

In fact, such propaganda derives its plausibility from a series of assumptionsthat no one would be willing to defend explicitly. It attributes all socioeconomic wrongs of the Indian society to its structure and civilisation.The implication is that there is only one way to get rid of socio-economic wrongs here: one has to eradicate both the social structure and the Hindu civilisation.It is as though one would blame the racism, bingedrinking, pedophilia, poverty, homelessness and domestic violence in the contemporary West on its age-old civilisation.

The times have changed. As Europeans, we need to reflect on our deep-rooted sense of superiority and how this informs our moralising discourse on human rights in other parts of the world. To appreciate the impression we give to Indians with our statements on caste discrimination, just imagine a possible world in which the Indian government regularly castigates the US for its racism against African-Americans and the disproportionate death penalties, and the EU for the treatment of South Asians in England, Turks in Germany, women in Romania, the Basque movement in Spain, gypsies in Italy … just imagine Indian members of parliament consistently blaming the very structure of western societies as the cause of all these wrongs. Europe needs to wake up fast. The time of colonialism is over.If we do not change our attitudes, the irritation towards the EU will grow in countries like India and China. So will the unwillingness to collaborate. In the fast-changing world of the early 21st Century, Europe cannot afford this.

William Durant (1885-1981): Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.

Sylvain Levi (1863-1935): She (India) has left indelible imprints on one fourth of the human race….from Persia to the Chinese sea, from the icy regions of Siberia to Islands of Java and Borneo, India has propagated her beliefs, her tales, and her civilization!

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803): …. mankind’s origins can be traced to India, where the human mind got the first shapes of wisdom and virtue with a simplicity, strength and sublimity which has – frankly spoken – nothing, nothing at all equivalent in our philosophical, cold European world

Friedrich Majer (1771-1818): It will no longer remain to be doubted that the priests of Egypt and the sages of Greece have drawn directly from the original well of India,

Romain Rolland (1866-1944): If there is one place on the face of this Earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest day when man began the dream of existence, it is India.

Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire (1694-1774): I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, – astronomy, astrology, metapsychosis,.. It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn geometry…But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins’ science not been long established in Europe…It did not behove us, who were only savages and barbarians when these Indians were civilised and learned, to dispute their antiquity.

Arnold H Ludwig Heeren (1760-1842): India is the source from which not only the rest of Asia but the whole Western World derived their knowledge and their religion.

Mark Twain (1835-1910): India had the start of the whole world in the beginning of things. She had the first civilization; she had the first accumulation of material wealth; she was populous with deep thinkers and subtle intellects; she had mines, and woods, and a fruitful soul. India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. Our most valuable and most astrictive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only!

It very well may come to pass in the near future that those concerned with truth will wrestle primarily with history rather than science. The obvious reason for this is that, in the words of Dr. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, author of Theology and the World’s Religious History, “Humanity is more important than things. The truth about humanity is of a higher order than the truth about things.”1

History tells an intriguing tale, one that ultimately may provide the greatest support for a spiritual worldview. But history has also been distorted. An example of this is the “common knowledge” that Columbus discovered America. Some say he didn’t, nor were any other Europeans the first to touch America’s shores. There is good reason to reexamine the history of the world and the Americas in particular. An unbiased look into the development of our planet’s civilizations may help to bring about a change in values, a shift from material values to spiritual ones.

What if Europe was really in darkness in comparison to the Far East and India that Columbus set sail to find? What if the popular idea that the Tibetans and the American Indians have much in common in terms of their spiritual culture is largely a result of another historical scenario? What if Hindus and Hopis, Advaitins and Aztecs, Tibetan monks and Mayans were part of one world culture — a spiritual one?

Perhaps the development of Western civilization and the Protestant ethic, which many of the West are now coming to abhor, have gotten in the way of the spiritual development of humanity. Perhaps many technological developments, while making physical contact with other cultures more possible, have distanced us from one another in a deeper sense.

Another historical scenario: The spiritually sophisticated Asians were the first to set foot on Western shores, and Asia, not Europe, was the seat of culture. The central focus of that culture was genuine spiritual development, not the mere shadow of the same in the form of the politically-motivated Pauline Christianity and later the Protestant ethic, which licensed humankind’s exploitation of nature.

This theory is found in the Vedic literature of India. The ancient Puranas (literally, histories) and the Mahabharata make mention of the Americas as lands rich with gold and silver. Argentina, which means ‘related to silver,’ is thought to have been named after Arjuna (of silver hue), one of the heroes of that great epic. India’s Puranic histories are, however, questionable to the rationalist. In the minds of the empiricists, they are more akin to myths. Yet myths have meaning, as the late Joseph Campbell has reminded us. ThePuranas downplay in particular the mere recording of mundane events. The Puranic view is that even if its histories are only myths (which is not necessarily the case), the lessons to be learned from them are infinitely more valuable than what can be learned from recording the coming and going of humanity. In their view, only those human events that serve to promote transcendental knowledge are worth recording. Although empiricists are justified in dismissing them from their viewpoint, the so-called myths and their followers are also justified in dismissing the empiricist’s insistence that empirical evidence is final.

Granted, India has shown some lacking in her ability to record her story. But that is due to her preoccupation with the transcendent, the suprahistorical, and not to any ineptitude on her part. According to Kana Mitra in her article “Theologizing Through History?” “We [Hindus] tend to forget about history, and the de-emphasis of nama-rupa — name and form [due to transcendent preoccupation] — is one of the reasons for not putting down a name or date in many of our writings. Consequently present-day historians have a difficult time in determining the date and authorship of various works.”2

Fortunately, for dealing with the “I’ll only believe it if I can see it” mentality of the empiricist, there is considerable hard evidence and academic support for the Vedic theory that most people are unaware of. Unbiased consideration of this remarkable evidence may move modern-day rationalists to give serious thought to the more realistic spiritual outlook of “Only if you believe it can you see it.” After all, reality is a living thing and it may reserve the right not to show itself but to those to whom it so chooses. Otherwise, why are we in illusion, or in search of reality? If it is something we can attain by our own prowess, how did we get here (in doubt) in the first place?

The meeting (1519) of Hernan Cortes and the Aztec emperor Montezuma II is depicted in this 17th century Spanish painting. (British Embassy, Mexico City). Unfortunately, the American Indians did not survive their cultural exchange with Europe. The Europeans, through book burning and bayonet, successfully “converted” them leaving very little trace of their noble civilization.

Many historians have scrutinized historical evidence to find more insight into the marvelous cultures that populated the American continent before Christopher Columbus was born. Their thirst for research was based on the assumption that the great Mayan, Aztec, and Incan civilizations could not have appeared all of a sudden in the Western world. Rather, they must have received strong influence from ancient Eastern cultures, mainly from India.

Alexander von Humbolt (1769-1859), an eminent European scholar and anthropologist, was one of the first to postulate the Asiatic origin of the Indian civilizations of the Americas.

His and other scholars’ views formed the basis for the “diffusionist” argument, which was opposed by the “isolationist” viewpoint. Diffusionists believe that the world’s civilizations are a result of social contact (civilized man meets uncivilized man). Isolationists believe that civilizations cropped up all over the earth without physical contact with one another.

The Aztec Calendar is known as the Aztec Chakra to Hindu Astronomers. (National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico.)

“The doctrine of the world’s ages (Hindu Yugas) was imported into Pre-Columbian America… The Mexican sequence is identical with the Hindus… The essential fact remains that they were derived from a common source… It would be ridiculous to assert that such a strange doctrine was of spontaneous origin in different parts of old and new worlds.” — Mackenzie, Myths of Pre-Columbian America.

It is readily accepted that some twenty thousand years ago primitive Asians crossed the Bering Strait into North America and gradually moved south all the way to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. Diffusionists maintained that after this occurred civilized Asiatic people distributed themselves via the Pacific, thereby bringing civilization to the Americas. Isolationists insisted that after the nomadic tribes crossed the Bering Strait, a homogeneous race of “Indians of the Americas” was formed, and the American tribespeople then went about reinventing all culture, duplicating in two thousand years what originally took about six millenniums in the Old World.

Henry Charlton Bastian, author of The Evolution of Life (1907), presented the concept of physicochemical evolution, which gave strength to the isolationists. His theory advocated that the development of civilized man was a result of “a psychic unity of mankind,” rather than social contact. Bastian’s theory of elementargedanke influenced many anthropologists, and today, although the theory is not accepted, it is tacitly acknowledged as far as the conformities between America and Old World civilizations are concerned.3

This pseudo-evolutionist theory leaves much to be desired, and its unspoken acceptance casts doubt on the credibility of the anthropologists. After all, doesn’t it tax our credulity when we are asked to believe that a whole series of complicated techniques like casting by the lost wax method, the alloying of copper and tin, the coloring of gold by chemical processes, weaving, and tie-dyeing and batik were by some miracle invented twice, once in the Old World and again from scratch in the Americas? What mysterious psychological law would have caused Asians and Americans to both use the umbrella as a sign of royalty, to invent the same games, imagine similar cosmologies, and attribute the same colors to the different directions?

No archeologist today would attribute to prehistoric Europeans the independent invention of bronze casting, iron work, the wheel, weaving, pottery, writing, and so many other cultural elements that were derived from the Middle East. Similarly, the industrial developments in Britain were introduced from elsewhere within the European continent, not developed independently. What then would cause one to insist that what was not possible for the Europeans (duplicating culture independently) was possible for the American Indians? Especially when at the same time we are taught that the Europeans were of superior stock!

It was in 1949 that these opposing views met head-on at the Congress of the Americanists held in New York, which was sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History. At that time, the diffusionists presented an overwhelming mass of Asiatic-Pacific-American parallels. Nonetheless, much of the diffusionists’ evidence continues to be ignored, and the isolationist view is more widely accepted. The reason for this may be more than empirical evidence or lack of the same. Indeed, it may be the faulty nature of the empirical approach, which depends on one’s imperfect senses and causes one to dismiss facts that do not conform with the prevailing worldview.

The Aryan civilization of India is a logical choice for the beginning of the diffusion of our planet’s civilization. American historian Will Durant, in his book Our Oriental Heritage, described India as the most ancient civilization on earth, and he offered many examples of Indian culture throughout the world. He demonstrated that as early as the ninth century b.c.e. Indians were exploring the sea routes, reaching out and extending their cultural influence to Mesapotamia, Arabia, and Egypt.

Although modern-day historians and anthropologists might prefer to accept Egypt or Babylon as the most ancient civilization, due to various archeological findings, their theories are by no means conclusive. The popular theory in the academic community that the Aryans were an Indo-European stock, who spoke an unknown pre-Sanskrit language and only later invaded India subsequently occupying her, is also considerably lacking in supportive evidence.Indeed, there is very little evidence whatsoever for the postulated Aryan invasion of India. But perhaps it is easier for modern people to accept ancient Egypt and Babylon, whose ancient civilizations have no living representation and thereby do not pose any challenge to the status quo.

But India is alive and kicking. Prominent traces of ancient Vedic civilization can still be found today not only in India but outside her borders as well. The life science of ayurveda, yoga and meditation, and Sanskrit texts translated into modern languages are all prominent examples. If we recognize ancient India as a civilized spiritual giant, we will have to reckon with her modern-day representations. It is altogether possible that the Vedic theory, if thoroughly researched, poses a threat to many of the concepts of modern civilization and the current worldview, as can be seen by the fact that the Vedic literature and spiritual ideology loomed as the greatest threat to the British in their imperialistic conquest of India.

The Aryans’ footprints are found throughout neighboring Southeast Asia.They were skilled navigators and pioneers of many cultural developments. According to several sources, these Aryans ruled in Java, Bali, Sumatra, Borneo, Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Annan, Burma, and Thailand until the fourteenth century. Even today, the kings of Thailand bear the title Rama after the Indian Ramraja (the perfect kingdom said to have been governed by the incarnation of Godhead Ramachandra). And the story of Ramayana is depicted on the palace walls in Bangkok.

Cambodia, the ancient Kamboja, boasts the largest temple complex in the world, named Ankor, from the Sanskrit language meaning “the capital city.” It was built in the ninth century c.e. in honor of the Hindu god Vishnu. The complex extends over an area more than twice the size of Manhattan and took thirty-seven years to complete. Its physical and spiritual grandeur is found elsewhere only in ancient Greece, Egypt, and among the Mayan and Aztec civilizations. Cambodia’s principle river is today called Me Kong, which some scholars say is derived from India’s Ma Ganga (Mother Ganges).

Vietnam, once called Champa, figures prominently as a stepping-stone in the story of India’s cultural expansion to the Americas. Furthermore, the Hindu state of Java was founded by the king of Kalinga (Orissa) in the first century c.e. Java is said to be the ancient Yava-Dveepa mentioned in the Ramayana and other Sanskrit texts. The Indonesian national flag flies the symbol of Garuda, the bird carrier of Vishnu. Garuda is also the national symbol of that country.

In 1949, two scholars, Gordon Ekholm and Chaman Lal, systematically compared the Mayan, Aztec, Incan, and North American Indian civilizations with the Hindu-oriented countries of Southeast Asia and with India herself. According to them, the emigrant cultures of India took with them India’s system of time measurement, local gods, and customs. Ekholm and Lal found signs of Aryan civilization throughout the Americas in art (lotus flowers with knotted stems and half-dragon/half-fish motifs found commonly in paintings and carvings), architecture, calendars, astronomy, religious symbols, and even games such as our Parcheesi and Mexican patolli, which have their origins in India’s pachisi.

Both the Hindus and the Americans used similar items in their worship rituals. They both maintained the concept of four yuga cycles, or cosmological seasons, extending over thousands of years, and conceived of twelve constellations with reference to the Sun as indicated by the Incan sun calendar.Royal insignias, systems of government, and practice of religious dance and temple worship all showed remarkable similarities, pointing strongly to the idea that the Americas were strongly influenced by the Aryans.

The temples of India (pict. 1-2) are built according to the ancient Vedic architectural science. There are striking similarities between Mayan temples and those in India. Pict. 3-4: Two Mayan temples from Palenque, Mexico and Central America.

Another scholar, Ramon Mena, author of Mexican Archeology, called the Nahuatl, Zapoteca, and Mayan languages “of Hindu origin.“ He went on to say, “A deep mystery enfolds the tribes that inhabited the state of Chiapas in the district named Palenque. . . . Their writing, and the anthropological type, as well as their personal adornments . . . their system and style of construction clearly indicate the remotest antiquity. . . . [they] all speak of India and the Orient.”4

Still another scholar, Ambassador Poindexter, in his two-volume 1930s treatise The Arya-Incas, called the Mayan civilization “unquestionably Hindu.”

The Aztec culture in particular shows a striking resemblance to that of India. Aztecs divided their society into four divisions of both labor and spiritual status, as did the Hindus. In India, this system of government was known as varnashrama, or the division of society based on body types and mental dispositions resulting from past karma. As in Indian civilization, the Aztecs maintained a God-centered government in which people were employed in accordance with their natural karmic tendencies. The results of the labor of all the priests, administrators, mercantilists, and laborers were for the glorification of Godhead, who in turn was thought to provide for humankind.

Aztec boys were sent to school at the age of five, at which time they were put under the care of a priest and trained in various duties of temple life. The Aztec system of education bears a striking resemblance to the Indian system of gurukula, in which boys were sent to the care of a guru for spiritual and practical education. The Mayans and Incas had a similar approach to education, which was mainly a training for priestly service. Fanny Bandelier’s translation of Sahagun’s History of Ancient Mexico describes that the intellectually inclined boys were trained as “ministers to the idols.”

Girls were educated in the domestic arts at home and did not mingle with young boys. Even as late as the 1930s, there was no courtship between Mexican Indian girls and boys, as is still the case in village life in India today. From conception to education, marriage, death, cremation, and even the observance of the sati rite, there are overwhelming parallels between Indian society and the Americas. Further evidence of cultural ties between the East and West is found in the statues of American gods who show a striking resemblance to the Hindu deities of Hanuman, Shiva, Indra, Vishnu and others. Such statues have been found throughout the Americas, and many of them can be seen today in museums in Central America.

The Mexican Indians and the Incas of Peru were primarily vegetarians. They were of high moral character and hospitable and generous as a habit. They practiced astrology, and mental telepathy was common among them. It was perhaps their peace-loving disposition that, like the Hindus, allowed them to be ruled by Europeans. Unfortunately, the American Indians did not survive their cultural exchange with Europe. The Europeans, through book burning and bayonet, successfully “converted” them, leaving very little trace of their noble civilization.

And what about Europe? When merchants sailing from India brought delicious spices, aromatic perfumes, incense, fine silk, precious stones set in delicate and rare jewelry, complex craftsmanship of ivory, and many other goods never seen before by Europeans, the riches and mystique of that land captivated them. The stories told by many navigators about that land of wonder, where the palaces were built of varieties of marble rather than rush stone, decorated with beautiful sculptures and wooden inlay, made the Queen of Spain so covetous that she provided Christopher Columbus with all necessities for his famous journey. Columbus had heard of India’s riches through the writings of Marco Polo. Polo had written that India “was the richest and noblest country of the world.”5

Europe, after Guttenburg’s invention of the printing press, wasted no time in announcing the discovery of the New World. It was at this time that European historians began to present to the rest of the world that their land was the center of culture and civilization.

In comparison to Indian society, however, the Europeans were rather crude. The ominous age of the Inquisition, with its persecution and fanaticism, the use of mechanical devices to insure the “chastity” of its women, the exploitation of the serfs, and self-destructive habits, such as indiscriminate eating and alcoholism within the higher classes, are all evidence of this.The original Palace of Versailles in Paris, although certainly a unique architectural creation requiring genius, was built without a single bathroom. Louis XIV and his court are said to have evacuated behind curtains, cleaning themselves with the same. The king was in the habit of substituting soap with Indian perfume and waited until his thirty-fifth birthday before he took his first complete bath.

When Europe was still uncivilized, Indian culture, as well as American culture, was highly advanced. When Europeans were still cave dwellers and nomads wandering from place to place subsisting through hunting, some American peoples were plowing fields and baking bread and dressing in cotton, the seeds for which came from India. The subtlety of Indian society, both eastern and western, marks its superiority to Europe. It was a subtlety of spiritual outlook that Europeans failed to appreciate.

The Dresden Codex, one of the few Mayan hieroglyphic manuscripts that survived the book-burnings by Spanish invaders, documents astronomical calculations of the planed Venus. Large numbers of codices were compiled by the Mayan priests to record religious rites and astronomical facts. (Sachsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden, East Germany.)

The industrial revolution of Europe was prompted by India’s cotton, which competed with European wool. Later when the popularity of cotton products imported from India increased, the Europeans began to manufacture cotton in mills. Thus it was even an Indian resource that prompted Europe’s claim to fame — the beginning of modern technology.

Several ancient cultures of the Americas were more spiritually attuned than the Europeans. They also lived with great regard for nature. Many people today are searching out the spirituality of the Americas, a spirituality that was lacking in Europe and is now lacking throughout the world. The Christ’s teachings were most certainly tainted with misunderstanding of that great savior’s message of love. And he too is said to have been influenced by India’s spirituality. His appearance in the world for that matter is mentioned in India’s Bavishya Purana long before the virgin birth took place.

The theory that India, Mother India, is the earthly source of spirituality can be to some extent supported by the fact that India is still today the most religious country in the world, with a theology that dates back to antiquity. The idea that she is the source of civilization as well, although supporting evidence is available, will ultimately require that modern man reevaluate what constitutes civilization before it gains wider acceptance.